5 Gal pure perlite hand watered

Hello,

Running South Florida OG (different strain from Triangle Kush).
Any questions or comments feel free to comment or ask.

5 gallon pots. Pure perlite hand watered. A trial of pure perlite if you will. Watered on time daily, pure perlite seems to be doing well. Will continue to update. Normally this is something you’d want to automate, though this room was to see pure perlite possibilities.


much love and respect!

Can you talk a bit about growing in solo perlite? Those plants look very good. How often do you water them? Any particularities? As in deficiencies and adjustments that need to be made because of the medium? What did you feed?

As far as running pure perlite the main thing is to make sure the root ball doesn’t go dry. 4 waterings per day about 1.5 liters per watering. They’re rather large so they really do soak it up. There are saucers under the pots but the runoff is in the 10% range.

one crucial point is calmag (especially in OG strains so to speak) otherwise they do tend to want to fade

nutes are H&G aqua flakes A&B, botanicare calmag and top booster from H&G. At the beginning some roots excelurator. The H&G isn’t really heavy as far as macros are concerned. The ultimate goal was tosee what we could do with pure perlite. Granted between veg and flower they were flushed, which was easy.

The particularity seems to be in not too little water, not too much water. Which is a fine line. Before doing a full drip drain to waste this seemed like a good idea.
As to get a solid feel for what’s too much, what’s too little, what’s a waste of nutes, what’s just right.

the capillary action is great, which in an automated system should be killer. Perlite seems to actually hold more moisture than hydroton as well.

Sunshine state seeds inc said:

As far as running pure perlite the main thing is to make sure the root ball doesn’t go dry. 4 waterings per day about 1.5 liters per watering. They’re rather large so they really do soak it up. There are saucers under the pots but the runoff is in the 10% range.

one crucial point is calmag (especially in OG strains so to speak) otherwise they do tend to want to fade

nutes are H&G aqua flakes A&B, botanicare calmag and top booster from H&G. At the beginning some roots excelurator. The H&G isn’t really heavy as far as macros are concerned. The ultimate goal was tosee what we could do with pure perlite. Granted between veg and flower they were flushed, which was easy.

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A hydro setup would really work better but I'm watching.

PadawanWarrior said:

A hydro setup would really work better but I'm watching.

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Agreed. A drip system was the ultimate goal. This room was more so to test it out before dedicating a system that wasn’t exactly proven, I guess.
This was the first test run to see if it worked. Now knowing it worked, makes total sense to do drip.

surprisingly, perlite retains moisture quite a bit longer than expected. Again these are large so that mileage may vary depending on size, pots etc.

The downside to pure perlite is that it needs fed frequently, i used it in a automated system and had good results.

Star Dog said:

The downside to pure perlite is that it needs fed frequently, i uses it in a automated system and had good results.

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Absolutely it definitely takes quite a bit of time without being automated. Which will be happening very shortly. Looking back this should’ve been automated from the get go.

With perlite I'd probably go with a recirculating system, otherwise it seems like a lot of wasted nutes.

Sunshine state seeds inc said:

Agreed. A drip system was the ultimate goal. This room was more so to test it out before dedicating a system that wasn’t exactly proven, I guess.
This was the first test run to see if it worked. Now knowing it worked, makes total sense to do drip.

surprisingly, perlite retains moisture quite a bit longer than expected. Again these are large so that mileage may vary depending on size, pots etc.

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I was thinking more like a flood and drain system. I rigged up a ghetto one with 32 oz Fun Cups, a 1 gal milk jug, aquarium tubing, cheap aquarium pump, aquarium gravel, a timer, and Miracle Grow, . It flooded the cups every so often and then drained back into the milk jug. It just seems like a pain to water them as often as they want by hand, and when they flower they're gonna want more.

The drip system might work OK too. Better than hand watering that often.

PJ Diaz said:

With perlite I'd probably go with a recirculating system, otherwise it seems like a lot of wasted nutes.

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Nute waste was one of the main topics of this. This run figuring out how much/when/frequency to be in that 10%ish runoff was why this was hand watered.

recirculating was an option (we’ve got titan ebb&flow, current culture, recirculating drip and drip drain to waste) though the concern with recirculating was the perlite slipping through and the possibility of pump damage. Even with a screen in the pump, if it somehow got into the screen and blocked the flow it brought up concern. That’s kind of where the decision was made to take this rooms data and use it to tune drip drain to waste as best as possible.

I did all perlite hempy buckets for a few years. Watered once a day and was easy only downside is they’re not very stable until roots are really established

Gemtree said:

I did all perlite hempy buckets for a few years. Watered once a day and was easy only downside is they’re not very stable until roots are really established

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The SIP style correct?

it was indeed a bit of a pain at the beginning. These started in rockwool 4x4 blocks. Which added a little extra heft. Veg was a bit of a pain trying to figure out by hand.

PadawanWarrior said:

I was thinking more like a flood and drain system. I rigged up a ghetto one with 32 oz Fun Cups, a 1 gal milk jug, aquarium tubing, cheap aquarium pump, aquarium gravel, a timer, and Miracle Grow, . It flooded the cups every so often and then drained back into the milk jug. It just seems like a pain to water them as often as they want by hand, and when they flower they're gonna want more.

The drip system might work OK too. Better than hand watering that often.

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Love it! If it works, run it!

Sunshine state seeds inc said:

The SIP style correct?

it was indeed a bit of a pain at the beginning. These started in rockwool 4x4 blocks. Which added a little extra heft. Veg was a bit of a pain trying to figure out by hand.

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Yeah you just have one hole drilled a couple inches up so it makes a little reservoir that can wick all day

Gemtree said:

I did all perlite hempy buckets for a few years. Watered once a day and was easy only downside is they’re not very stable until roots are really established

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Right, OP is not doing anything new here. Perlite Hempy buckets have been around since the early 00's. Always someome trying to re-invent the wheel

First thought that came to my head was Perlite Hempy buckets. As that’s all I run and have run for a while now and have been happy.

MATTYMATT726 said:

Right, OP is not doing anything new here. Perlite Hempy buckets have been around since the early 00's. Always someome trying to re-invent the wheel

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Trying to reinvent the wheel? No one’s saying this is brand new. It’s been done by many over the years.

Only showcasing what’s being done in this particular room with these particular plants. Along with numbers and data collected for a more precise dial in when the room is switched to drip drain to waste.

Hempy buckets have been around a very long time. These aren’t hempy buckets. These aren’t SIP. The grooves in the floor make collecting Ph and PPM of the runoff easier. More of a pure perlite, drain to waste. We’re all doing something a little different that fits our needs and our systems and rooms better. There are troughs already in the floor which would be the “lands and grooves” in the panda poly flooring. The grooves collecting runoff. Then the runoff is sent down the drain.

no worries, there’s always somebody.

1dude1seed said:

First thought that came to my head was Perlite Hempy buckets. As that’s all I run and have run for a while now and have been happy.

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They do work quite well. There are troughs in this floor, so to speak. A good few runs of drip drain to waste was done in the room so it’s already outfitted with the “lands and grooves” so we figured run a test run in pure perlite for drain to waste before running a fully automated room that wastes a lot of nutes. Would be a good idea. Will publish the full graph if you will, if what was done in this room in case someone else wanted to give it a try.

hempy buckets work great. This room is already Set up for drip drain to waste so the thought process was use what we already have and do a test run first. There’s only minimal differences, though trying something different seemed like a good choice.

Couple of questions:

Why is there so many 3 fingered leaf ? Usually that is a sign of things. Plus it seems it as purple stalks / stems.

I thought southflorida og was an indica dom .

What light cycle are those on ?
Seems overly stretched.
Why not train if these are that tall ?

Also. 3:1 perlite to vermiculite would cut down watering frequency